Competence: ACS and registration

Two separate legal tests decide who may do gas work. The person doing the work must be competent. The business they work for, or the self-employed engineer, must be registered. Both come from regulation 3 of GSIUR.

Competence: the person

Nobody may do any work on a gas fitting or gas storage vessel unless they are competent to do it. That applies to everyone, including DIY work and favours for friends or family.

HSE's Approved Code of Practice describes competence as a combination of practical skill, training, knowledge and experience to do the job safely and leave the installation safe to use. Knowledge must be kept up to date with changes in the law, technology and safe working practice.

Under the ACoP, gas work should only be done by:

• someone who has completed industry-recognised training followed by an assessment of competence, or
• someone who is, or has been, registered, and who has proved their competence through a certification scheme.

The training should cover the safe installation, purging, commissioning, testing, servicing, maintenance, repair, disconnection, alteration and dismantling of the systems and appliances they work on. It should also cover related services such as water and electricity, and the risk of exposure to asbestos.

The duty is shared. Employers must make sure their engineers are competent for the work they do, and monitor their performance. So must anyone else who controls the work, or who has work done at a workplace they control.

The Accredited Certification Scheme

The certification scheme the ACoP refers to is the Accredited Certification Scheme (ACS). Engineers' competence is assessed under arrangements set by the industry's standards-setting body, and reassessed every five years. The assessments are run by certification bodies accredited by UKAS. The engineer's certificate of competence, or Gas Safe Register, shows which work they are competent to do.

ACS assessments are grouped into core assessments and appliance assessments. CCN1, the core domestic natural gas assessment, is one of the Category A cores. Appliance assessments such as CENWAT (central heating and water heating) or CKR1 (cookers) add to the range of work.

Routes into ACS

ACS Guidance Note 8 sets out the routes to assessment:

• New entrants without relevant experience complete a managed learning programme (MLP) approved by IGEM, which combines training with a portfolio of on-site experience, before taking their core assessments.
• Experienced engineers, meaning those registered (or previously registered) who have held a core ACS (or relevant qualification) for at least 12 months, can renew their certificates, or extend their range (more appliances in the same sector, such as adding HTR1 to CCN1 and CENWAT) or their scope (a different sector, such as domestic to commercial).
• Extending range or scope usually needs training and evidence of on-site experience, with at least 12 months since the qualification or core ACS. Sooner than that, the engineer completes a bridging programme based on the MLP. Where that experience isn't available, evidence from a realistic work environment at an approved training centre can be used. An engineer who holds CCN1 doesn't have to wait 12 months before training and assessment for domestic meter work.

Registration: the business

No employer may let an employee do work on a gas fitting or service pipework, and no self-employed person may do it, unless they are a member of a class of persons approved by HSE. Today that means being on the Gas Safe Register. An engineer who is employed by a registered business but does gas work on their own account must be registered in their own right.

Anyone who has gas work done at a place of work they control, or who controls gas work (such as a main contractor), must take reasonable steps to check that the person doing it is registered, or works for a registered business.

Sources: GSIUR 1998 regs 3–4competence, registration L56 (2018) paras 81–102ACoP and guidance ACS Guidance Note 8 v7.1 (2022)entry routes CCN1 Issue 16 §1assessed

▸Tutor notes

• Ask learners to explain the difference between being competent and being registered, and why the law needs both.
• Have learners look up their own route in Guidance Note 8 Table 2 and say which category their core assessment is in.
• Ask learners to work out when their own first five-yearly reassessment will fall due, and what they'll need to keep up to date before then.